Copenhagen hogs the spotlight, but for radical Danish architecture, cutting-edge food and plenty of hygge, head to Aarhus

”Your rainbow panorama”, a permanent work of art by Olafur Eliasson at the ARoS Aarhus Art Museum.
Photo:
Mikkel Heriba for The Wall Street Journal

By

Kate Maxwell

Dec. 7, 2017 11:47 am ET

EVER SINCE the waiter set down my reindeer-neck rillettes starter, I had known something was amiss with my meal at Haervaerk, an offal emporium in the Danish city of Aarhus. But I hadn’t been able to work out what exactly. It wasn’t the no-menu policy, which meant each course was a (good) surprise. Every dish, from the goose breast with celeriac to the smoked venison and beetroot tartare, had proved as tasty as it was inventive. No, it was the music. As “Escape (The Pina Colada Song)” transitioned to “9 to 5,” I realized that the restaurant’s ’80s-pop soundtrack was utterly out of kilter with its natural wines, earthenware plates and candlelight. It was a minor blemish on an otherwise excellent meal, but in Denmark, where design is elevated to high art and everything is just so, you notice such incongruities.

Aarhus, Denmark’s second city, had been anointed a Capital of Culture for 2017 by the European Union, and I’d come to check out its design and food scene. I’d spent the day taking in its radical public architecture, and getting a thorough workout in the process. I’d been warned that they’re big on steps in Aarhus, because elevating buildings above ground level allows in more natural light—often a scarce resource in Scandinavia. Light alchemy was the founding principle of Denmark’s famous Henning Larsen Architects and the company now has a team dedicated to developing new techniques to harness it.

Exploring Aarhus

A look at the Danish city’s elevated architecture and food scene

Shops in the Latinerkvarteret neighborhood.

Mikkel Heriba for The Wall Street Journal

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Shops in the Latinerkvarteret neighborhood.

Mikkel Heriba for The Wall Street Journal

My first stop had been Dokk1, an angular, concrete-and-glass iceberg, which houses Scandinavia’s largest library and rises above Aarhus’s many sets of docks. When I was breathing evenly again after the ascent, I asked the librarian how she felt about Aarhus’s Culture accolade. “I get goosebumps just thinking about it,” she said, tearing up, before waxing poetic about the city’s new sense of confidence and gradual emergence from the shadow of glamour puss Copenhagen.

Up another flight, Fritz Hansen Egg-style armchairs, filled with laptop toting youngsters, looked out onto the water, onto which a thick mist still clung. Otherwise, I might have been able to make out Bassin 7, currently the city’s most ambitious building project. Denmark’s architect of the moment, Bjarke Ingels is transforming the harbor into a public plaza, with swimming pools, beach huts, a theater and jagged, high-rise apartments.

It’s another long—and this time labyrinthine—walk to the top of ARoS, Aarhus’s contemporary art museum, whose corkscrewing interior feels like a convoluted Guggenheim. It’s well worth the trek, and, in my case, the sweaty panic of briefly getting lost, to emerge inside a circular skywalk, its glass tinted a rainbow series of colors by Icelandic artist-architect Olafur Eliasson.

The mist had dissipated by then, giving me a rose-tinted—and yellow, green and blue—view of the city as I encircled the skywalk, sharing goofy grins with the few other visitors. ARoS’s architectural forebears were spread beneath me: medieval townhouses with wonky gables; the sober brick cathedral and its copper spire; Arne Jacobsen’s and Erik Moller’s City Hall.

In addition to housing Scandinavia’s largest library, Dokk1 contains play areas for children, a cafe and lounges and study halls for Aarhus’s many young residents.
Photo:
Mikkel Heriba for The Wall Street Journal

The following day, I explored Jacobsen’s and Moller’s modernist masterpiece, a marble-clad monument to democracy that’s all the more remarkable considering it was completed in 1941, when Aarhus was occupied by the Germans. Guided tours are available on Saturdays, but it was Thursday, so I embarked on my own illicit circuit, noting Jacobsen’s signature curved-wood benches above the spiral staircase, the monochrome mosaic floors and custom-made brass fixtures. Then, I caught the number 18 bus to Moesgaard Museum, 20 minutes’ drive from the city.

The archaeology museum, which opened in 2014, is a peerless marriage of form and function. Out there, the fog still lingered, forming an appropriate backdrop to Henning Larsen’s grass-covered building, cantilevering from the ground at 45 degrees like a toppled gravestone. A series of subterranean exhibitions transport visitors through Scandinavia’s receding ice to the Stone Age, with its hunter-gatherers and their mountains of discarded oyster shells. Some exhibits take the multimedia interactivity too far, including the heavy leather Viking helmet with built-in headphones I put on and promptly removed.

French quail with chopped quail hearts and funnel chanterelles at Gastromé restaurant.
Photo:
Mikkel Heriba for The Wall Street Journal

After the prehistoric hunting and gathering, I was ready for a refined meal. Gastrome restaurant, with its blond-wood floor and sheepskin-draped chairs, opened in 2014; six days later, the Michelin inspectors came calling, and awarded it a star (“I think it’s a record,” said the youthful sommelier-waiter). I was expecting a wacky feast, but the ingredients shone for what they were and didn’t pretend to be something else. it was experimental without straying too far into Willy Wonka territory. From the beef tenderloin with foie gras and sour pickled beets, to the chicken skin butter and peppery cream cheese on homemade bread, each bite was a delight.

My final stop was a wine bar called S’Vinbar that was the very definition of hygge, candlelit and crammed with lanky Danes who folded their extensive limbs around bar stools. I asked the owner, Sabine Sunne, how Aarhus differs from Copenhagen. “We take it down a gear here,” she said. “Aarhus still feels like a community, and unlike in Copenhagen, which can be quite snobby, we don’t feel we have to prove anything.”

Staying there: Aarhus is short on boutique, high-end hotels—for now, your best bet is Comwell Aarhus, a high-rise that caters to the conference crowd, and has cozy, thoughtfully designed rooms with HAY furniture, great views, and helpful staff (from about $179 a night, comwellaarhus.dk).

Eating there: The city’s lively new covered street food market is well worth a visit—try a crunchy Ugandan Rolex (a rolled chapati with eggs) from UGood, or a pulled duck burger at Duck It (Ny Banegaardsgade 46). For Michelin-starred fare in a hygge setting, book into Gastrome (Rosensgade 28, gastrome.dk) or Substans (Frederiksgade 74, restaurantsubstans.dk). And don’t miss Haervaerk, for a surprise set menu of creative nose-to-tail dishes (Frederiks Allé 105, restaurant-haervaerk.dk).